The Third Balkan War, and How It Will End

MICHAEL G. ROSKIN

From Parameters, Autumn 1994, pp. 57-69 . (Note: Two maps printed
with the original article are not included in this on-line version. To
request a copy, send your fax number or postal address to usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@mail.mil.)

The current fighting in ex-Yugoslavia gains clarity
if we look at it as the Third Balkan War--a series of purposeful, planned
moves to enlarge the power and territory of the Serbian state, rather than
the chaotic "mess" depicted in the news media. The first two
Balkan wars also offer some clues as to how the third might end.

The media focus us too narrowly on Bosnia, as if that were the only
problem in the region. The Serb-Croat fight is deemed more or less settled;
after all, UNPROFOR (the United Nations Protection Force) is in place.
This is seriously deceptive, for Croatia and Bosnia are simply different
fronts of the same war, the Third Balkan War. The US Central Intelligence
Agency and news media do not help matters when they publish maps showing
the extent of Serbian conquests in Bosnia alone or (now rarely) in Croatia
alone, and on two different maps, as if to imply they are two wars.

The First Balkan War concerned how big Ottoman Turkey's holdings in
Europe should be and ended when a military coalition pushed Turkey back
to its present corner of Europe. The Second Balkan War concerned how big
Bulgaria should be and ended when a military coalition forced Bulgaria
to give up its recent conquests. The Third Balkan War concerns how big
Serbia should be and will likely end when a military coalition forces Serbia
to give up some or all of its recent conquests.

The first two Balkan wars narrowly preceded World War I and were to
some extent evidence of the breakdown of the great-power balance that had
kept general peace in Europe, albeit with increasing difficulty, for a
century. The Third Balkan War broke out in 1991 as Yugoslavia disintegrated,
which to some degree reflected the end of the superpower duopoly that had
kept Europe in peaceful though tense equilibrium for more than four decades.

Three Balkan Wars

Years

Question

Outcome

First

1912-13

How big Turkey?

Turkey loses

Second

1913

How big Bulgaria?

Bulgaria loses

Third

1991-

How big Serbia?

?

Figure 1. Comparison of Balkan Wars.

The First Balkan War of 1912-13 was a multilateral (Montenegro, Serbia,
Greece, and Bulgaria) effort to erase the remaining belt of Turkish territory
that stretched across the peninsula from Albania on the Adriatic to Thrace
on the Black Sea. Bulgaria gained Western Thrace (giving Bulgaria direct
access to the Mediterranean Sea) and claimed Macedonia, both of which had
been part of the medieval Bulgarian kingdom.

This claim led immediately to the Second Balkan War. Serbia and Greece
refused to evacuate Macedonia, and in 1913 Bulgaria attacked its erstwhile
allies. Meanwhile Romania struck Bulgaria from the north in order to obtain
Southern Dobrudja (the wedge of land south of the mouth of the Danube).
It is for such behavior that "Balkan war" connotes an opportunistic
pile-on. Overextended Bulgaria lost, and Greece and Serbia divided Macedonia
between them and ordered the local inhabitants to speak, respectively,
only Greek and Serbian. (Not all complied.) Greece also took Western Thrace
from Bulgaria. In World Wars I and II, Bulgaria, allied with Germany, again
occupied Macedonia only to be thrown out as the wars neared their end.

The Third Balkan War

The present Balkan war began in 1991 when a conservative Serbian coalition
in Belgrade, led by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and including
the commanders of the old Yugoslavian army, decided to use all means fair
and foul to keep Yugoslavia together and under Belgrade's tutelage.[1]
Serbia always had seen itself as the heroic molder and pillar of Yugoslavia,
and most of Yugoslavia's civil and military officers were Serbs. Accordingly,
a great many federal jobs were at stake. Events appeared to unroll spontaneously,
but that is not quite true. Rather, with varying degrees of control and
efficiency the general staff of the old Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija
(JNA, Yugoslav Peoples Army) in Belgrade planned and executed the Third
Balkan War.[2] Initially, the JNA tried to preserve Yugoslavia by force
of arms, but this quickly became impossible, so the JNA lowered its aims
to carving out a Greater Serbia. In this war local Serb militias would
do much of the dirty work in "ethnically cleansing" all areas
of Serbian settlement in Croatia and Bosnia. Amid totally unreal claims
of impending genocide against the Serbian people, Serbs who did not like
this policy were isolated as "enemies of Serbia."[3]

Although the JNA deliberately cloaks its actions in the fog of war,
it appears that most lines of authority lead back to the general staff
in Belgrade. With nothing more than a change in shoulder patches, Serbian
officers, specialists (intelligence, communications, radar, artillery,
and so on), and even ordinary soldiers rotate in and out of the Krajina
(western Croatian) and Bosnian Serb armies. These armies try to preserve
the fiction that they are purely local militias defending their respective
Serbian communities. But weapons and ammunition flow from Serbia. Heavy
equipment is returned to Serbia for repair. Seriously wounded are evacuated
to Serbia. Military conscription continues in Serbia, although ostensibly
"Serbia" is uninvolved in the fighting.

The first fighting flared in mid-1991 as Slovenia, the rich northwest
corner of old Yugoslavia, declared its independence and moved to take over
border posts. In a few days of fighting with a few dozen killed (only 14
of them Slovenes), the JNA decided to withdraw, at least for the moment.
After they had taken care of Croatia, which separates Slovenia from the
rest of Yugoslavia, they would have secure lines of communication by which
to retake Slovenia.

But Croatia, which declared its independence at the same time, put up
unexpected resistance. The Croats were terribly outgunned, relying on the
meager arsenals of the territorial defense forces that had been set up
in the old Yugoslavia. These resembled the US National Guard except they
relied entirely on republic (i.e., state) funding with which to purchase
weapons, mostly from the federal government in Belgrade. The richest republic,
Slovenia, did buy arms, including non-Yugoslav weapons. Poorer republics,
such as Macedonia in the extreme south of the country, could afford almost
nothing, and that is the condition of its arsenal today. "When the
war began, the Serbs had as many tanks as we had rifles," say Croatian
officers, who also claim that a few hundred armed Croatian civilians held
off a large JNA force attacking Vukovar for weeks.[4] In the end, only
137 Croats surrendered, to the Serbs' amazement. "Vukovar is our Alamo,"
intone Croatian officers.

Nonetheless, with plentiful manpower and munitions, Serbian forces took
from Croatia what Belgrade decided were areas of Serb settlement: Eastern
Slavonia (including Vukovar), a spur of Western Slavonia, and the large
bulge of Krajina that curves around Bosnia and pushes toward the coast.

Historical Background

Contrary to what the media tell us, the fighting in Yugoslavia does
not trace back to ancient ethnic hatreds.[5] The hatreds are relatively
recent and hyped by manipulative politicians on all sides. Most of Krajina
did have a Serbian majority stemming from at least the late 17th century,
when Serbs fled Ottoman territory and received lands from the Habsburgs
to serve as settler-soldiers on the military frontier (in Serbo-Croatian,
Vojna Krajina) that separated the two warring empires for two centuries.
Under the Austro-Hungarian empire, Serbs and Croats in this region lived
together for centuries without violence. Ethnic relations in Titoist Yugoslavia
were not bad. (To be sure, if you said otherwise, you could do jail time.)
In areas of mixed Serb and Croat settlement, as in Krajina and Bosnia,
the rate of intermarriage was quite high.

Serbs do have motivation for their territorial seizures in Krajina and
Bosnia, for these were the regions of the worst massacres of Serbs by the
fascist Croatian Ustasha during World War II. (Hitler gave the Croatian
puppet state all of Bosnia.) The Ustasha killed an estimated 350,000 Serbs,
although Croats say it was only 60,000, whereas Serbs claim 750,000 or
more. Virtually every Serbian family from this region lives with the memory
of relatives butchered. The Zagreb government that declared independence
in 1991 ignored these memories. It demanded that Krajina Serbs take an
oath of loyalty to Croatia and was vague about minority rights. (The new
Croatian constitution now guarantees, on paper at least, ample minority
rights, but it came much too late to assure the Krajina Serbs, many of
whom would not have believed it anyway.)

Serbs accuse Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, a former partisan officer
and later general in postwar Yugoslavia, of destroying a monument at the
dread Jasenovac concentration camp, where the Ustasha killed tens of thousands
of Serbs, Jews, and gypsies without benefit of gas. Croats dispute the
accusation as utter nonsense: Jasenovac (near Croatia's border with Bosnia,
in the Western Slavonian spur) has long been in Serbian hands, not Croatian.

The new Zagreb regime used some of the same symbols as the wartime Ustasha
(coat of arms, police uniforms, and currency), convincing some Serbs they
would be massacred again. Would they have been? It's very unlikely, but
Croatian heavy-handedness played into the hands of local Serbian extremists,
who were carrying out Belgrade's orders. Starting in 1990, the JNA formed,
trained, and armed Serbian militias in Krajina.[6] This region, under local
leadership, then declared itself the independent "Republic of Serbian
Krajina" (RSK) even before Zagreb declared Croatia independent in
1991 and drove out local Croats by brutal means. It was here that the expression
"ethnic cleansing" was first overheard on Serbian military radio.

This ethnic cleansing was not a spontaneous outpouring of hatred but
rather part of a carefully planned media campaign that has now produced
a climate of extreme ethnic stereotyping on all sides. Serbs now regard
Croats as natural-born fascists who strive pathetically to imitate Germans
and Austrians. Serbs see themselves as the historically aggrieved party,
as brave and sturdy defenders of an authentic Slavic culture against Turks
and Teutons alike. Croats now regard Serbs as non-European barbarians who
lived so long under the Turks they became like them. Croats regard themselves
as Central European rather than Balkan and heirs to centuries of Habsburg
high culture and civilization. Outsiders can't tell them apart.

Historically, Serbs considered Bosnia part of Serbia; this was the spark
that ignited World War I. Serbs do not regard Bosnian Muslims as a separate
nationality--indeed, designating them such was a fiction of the Tito regime--but
as treasonous Serbs who "turned Turk" over the centuries for
personal gain (for example, avoiding taxes). Serbs also claim to detect
in the earlier writings of Bosnian President Alia Izetbegovic an Islamic
fundamentalism inimical to Bosnian Serbs. As in Krajina, Bosnian Serbs
were taken over long in advance by local extremists for the purpose of
building a "Serbian Republic" that now covers 70 percent of Bosnia
and is being "cleansed" of non-Serbs.

All totaled, Croatia lost 30 percent of its territory to Serbs in 1991
and 1992. Always a curious shape, with its long, thin Dalmatian coast,
it has now been hollowed out to resemble a horseshoe. As such, Croatia
may not be economically viable. The major Croatian city of Karlovac is
12 miles from Serbian-held territory, within artillery range. Serbian lines
neared the coast, but the Croats beat them back. Belgrade had its eye on
the important port of Zadar; otherwise Serbia's only outlet to the sea
is the port of Bar in Montenegro, which stayed with Serbia in the rump
Yugoslavia.

The most serious loss to Croatia is the westernmost bulge of the Krajina
republic, specifically the town of Knin, through which pass the only rail
line and main highway from Zagreb to Split, chief city of the Dalmatian
coast. With these cut, one must first go to Rijeka, tucked up under the
Istrian peninsula, and then journey by road or boat down the coast. In
effect, Dalmatia, home of an important regionalist movement in Croatian
domestic politics, is semi-isolated from Zagreb. Croatia's big foreign-exchange
earner, the tourists who used to flock to the Dalmatian Coast, haven't
been coming in recent years. Recovery of Knin is thus an urgent political,
economic, and military matter for Croatia.

At this writing, the Serb-Croat front is calm. A United Nations Protection
Force patrols the 1992 lines, observed by both sides because both want
a respite, unlike the war in Bosnia, which continues at a low level. This
war, however, really should be considered of a piece with the Croatian
war. It simply started a year later, in 1992, as Bosnian Serbs, armed and
prepared well in advance by the JNA, declared their own Serbian Republic
of Bosnia even before a Muslim-led (but multiethnic) Bosnian government
declared its independence.

Current Instability

The present lull in the Third Balkan War is inherently unstable and
may soon end. At least three (and maybe more) discontented elements profoundly
want Serbian territory and power reduced. First, the Croats believe they
must recover their lost territories, especially Knin. They swear they will
not rest until all of Croatia is again under their control. If diplomacy
does not work, they will do it by military means. There is no reason to
doubt them. Virtually all Croats--even antiwar pacifists--agree the lost
lands must be recovered; they are a vital national interest.

Croatian hatred for Serbs, if it was not before, has become virtually
racist. Some Croatian officers now proudly identify themselves with the
Ustasha, who, they say, also fought for Croatia. Croatia continues to mobilize
and purchase equipment through the leaky arms embargo. Analysts claim that
large amounts of Soviet-type arms and munitions from the defunct East German
Volksarmee reached Croatia via a sympathetic Hungary. Germany has
clearly favored Croatia and pushed the rest of West Europe into diplomatic
recognition of Zagreb in late 1991.

Second, the Bosnian Muslims desperately wish to overthrow Serbian power;
otherwise the Muslims are trapped in a few towns surrounded by--and indiscriminately
shelled by--Serbian artillery. The Muslims will either beat back the Serbs
or suffer exile or death. For the better part of a year, however, Muslims
and Croats fought each other, mostly in Herzegovina, the triangle-shaped
southernmost fifth of Bosnia that is heavily Croatian in makeup. The Croats
were perfectly willing to knife the Muslims in the back in order to secure
Herzegovina for Croatia. Croats, however, claim that historically they
have never been anti-Muslim the way Serbs are; the Ottomans occupied only
about half of Croatia, and for not nearly as long as they occupied Serbia.
There may be some truth to the assertion, but one would never know it from
the ferocity of Croat-Muslim fighting in the museum-town of Mostar, famous
for its graceful Turkish bridge, an arc of stone now destroyed.

Nonetheless, Bosnian Croats and Muslims claimed to have patched things
up with the US-brokered agreement signed in Washington in March 1994. They
agreed to form a Croat-Muslim federation within Bosnia and then confederate
this with Croatia proper. This solidifies Croatian power in Herzegovina
and provides Bosnian Muslims with much-improved access to arms and munitions.
The improved relations mean that Croatian airfields and ports serve as
conduits for war materiel from sympathetic Islamic states.[7] In sum, Croat-Bosnian
cooperation has become a much more serious military proposition for a Serbian
war machine that is already stretched thin.

The third bitterly discontented element is the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo,
Serbia's southern province and, before the 1389 Turkish conquest, heartland
of the Serbian kingdom and church. Now its population is some 90 percent
Albanian Kosovari, but Serbs swear they will never relinquish it.
It was in playing to Serbian anti-Albanian fears that Slobodan Milosevic
climbed to elected power in 1987. Under martial law, Kosovo is patrolled
by Serbs much the way Israeli forces patrol the West Bank. Some Serbian
extremists, such as the gangster Arkan, swear they will "cleanse"
Kosovo after they are through with Bosnia.[8] Albanian spokesmen in Tirana
claim low-level ethnic cleansing and the creation of refugees has long
been underway. Although the local (underground) Kosovar leadership urges
self-restraint, the province could explode at any time.

In the meantime, Serbia may be weakening. Although it has one of the
largest armies in Europe, morale problems have appeared, and many young
Serbs emigrate to avoid conscription. Conspicuously weak is Serbian infantry
(which obviously requires high morale); Serbs would rather lob artillery
and mortar rounds into their opponents' positions. This helps to explain
why the Serbs have been unable to take all the Bosnian-Muslim enclaves
that they surround.[9] Under an admittedly leaky economic embargo, Serbian
industry has all but collapsed. The economy depends on the remittances
of Serbs working abroad, chiefly in Germany; indeed, the new Serbian currency
is tied to the mark in the hope of limiting inflation. The unlimited printing
of money to pay civil and military employees and to prop up industries
produced the world's highest hyperinflation, worse than Weimar Germany's.
Markets run by barter or deutsche marks. Fuel is hijacked at gunpoint from
passing barges on the Danube. In a few years, Serbia could be economically
lower than Albania.

Scenario for the Third Balkan War

The following scenario is thus not hard to imagine unfolding within
the next few months.[10] Fighting in Bosnia flares up as newly equipped
Bosnian forces probe for areas where the Serbs are stretched thin and lack
heavy weapons. Much of Serbia's reserve military forces are sent southward
to deal with Bosnia. But Serbia has weakened while Croatia has strengthened.
With classic Balkan opportunism, Croatia attacks in the north in an effort
to regain its lost territories. If successful, the Bosnian Muslims and
Croats settle accounts with local Serbs. One must expect renewed ethnic
cleansing, this time with Serbs as victims.

Meanwhile, the underground ethnic-Albanian leadership of Kosovo, in
consultation with Tirana, senses that this is their chance, and attempts
to seize control of what it has already declared an independent state.
Serbian resistance to this attempt is savage, and refugees and fighting
spill over into neighboring Albania and Macedonia, thus internationalizing
the war. One must include the possibility that Greece, a historic ally
of Serbia, will move to secure its claims to southern Albania (Northern
Epirus to the Greeks) and southern Macedonia, which, according to the Greeks,
should not even exist. It is also conceivable that Hungary could take an
interest in northern Vojvodina, where the 400,000 ethnic Magyars are virtual
hostages under Serbian control and pressure. Hungary held this area during
World War II. The Third Balkan War could be quite large. (Swiss-like Slovenia,
shielded from Serbian wrath by Croatia, will do nothing in all of this.)

At this writing (summer 1994), we are likely between phases one and
two of the Third Balkan War. The first phase was the fighting that accompanied
the independence declarations of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. The second
phase is likely to see the Croatian pushback of Serbian-held territories,
as the Serbs become tied down in renewed fighting in Bosnia. This likely
second phase, unfortunately, by itself will probably not bring an end to
the Third Balkan War. Something more will be required.

How to End This War?

The Third Balkan War is likely to end only when Serbian power is insufficient
to retain current Serbian territorial holdings, which are trimmed back
by force of arms, much like the First Balkan War ended with the military
pushback of Turkish power and the Second Balkan War ended with the military
pushback of Bulgarian power. The international community's efforts to impose
a peace before Serbia has suffered one or more military reverses is a non-starter.
Belgrade will take peace opportunities seriously only when it realizes
that Serbia is overextended, its economy is ruined, its young men flee
the draft, and it faces too many enemies at once. Serbia has actual or
potential territorial claimants on four borders: Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary,
and Albania. Could we give these claims a boost? Would it hasten the coming
of peace or provoke a wider war?

All scenarios, of course, are speculative, and the reader is entitled
to be skeptical. To suppose the contrary, however, that the Third Balkan
War is starting to wind down, requires a bit of speculation, too. It requires
one to believe, namely, that the Croats are unserious about regaining the
lost 30 percent of their country or that they will be able to do so by
diplomatic means. This last point is not impossible, but neither is it
very probable. On 30 March 1994 a delegation of Krajina Serbs signed a
cease-fire with Croatian authorities in the Russian Embassy in Zagreb.[11]
The two sides see the cease-fire quite differently, though. Croatian Foreign
Minister Mate Granic described the agreement with "Serb rebels"
as part of "the overall process of the peaceful reintegration of the
occupied areas into the constitutional and legal system of the Republic
of Croatia."[12] At the same time, the president of RSK (i.e., the
"Serb rebels") Milan Martic pledged continued resistance to the
"genocide" of the "new Ustasha state" and the unification
of all Serbian lands.[13] Martic was to have led the Krajina delegation
to Zagreb but dropped out because he is wanted there as a war criminal.

Could Zagreb and the RSK finesse an arrangement that would return Krajina
to Croatia but give the Krajina Serbs substantial autonomy (their own police,
school system, use of Cyrillic, and so on)? If such an agreement--now an
optimistic wish--were to work, it would have to include reopening the rail
and highway corridor for Croatian traffic from Zagreb to Split through
Knin. Meetings on the subject quickly broke down. With Serbia so far the
victor, there is simply no pressure on the Krajina Serbs to settle for
anything less than integration into a Greater Serbia.

Some hope that Milosevic, under Russian pressure, could abandon the
Krajinia Serbs and let them reach the best deal they can with Zagreb. That,
of course, would mean the end of the maximalist dream of Greater Serbia
("All Serbs in one country") and the abandonment of brother Serbs
to reprisals by Croatian and Muslim fascists. As of this writing, no such
movement is afoot in Belgrade. Instead, nationalist rhetoric flies high,
and one hears of no Serbs who worry they could lose more by fighting than
by compromising. Serbs have never been noted for a spirit of compromise,
and there are no important Serbian opposition "peace parties"
urging a settlement of the war. Only the very small Civil Alliance, composed
of Belgrade intellectuals, opposes the war.[14]

If Serbia wished to, could it call off the war? Could it keep its present
conquests in Croatia and Bosnia and say, "All right, we have enough.
We are prepared to negotiate with Zagreb and Sarajevo to make our territorial
holdings permanent"? Zagreb and Sarajevo would accept such an offer
only if they felt they had more to lose by continued fighting, and they
do not. For the war to end by negotiation that leaves a Greater Serbia
along its present lines is out of the question. Croats and Bosnian Muslims
will not ratify the existing status quo unless faced with imminent annihilation.
And time may be on their side.[15]

There are few ways to turn this war off any time soon, and attempts
to do so could make the war longer and more widespread. At present, no
side is willing to admit defeat. Even the seemingly impossible position
of the Bosnian Muslim government is buoyed by the prospect of Croatian
and/or major-power help.[16] The UN/NATO effort, muddled as it has been,
has unwittingly evolved into a virtual guarantee that most of the remaining
Muslim cities, including Sarajevo, will not be taken by the Serbs. Humanitarian
concern has turned into a city-by-city defense of Muslims, one month Sarajevo,
the next Tuzla, then Gorazde, and so on. A leopard-spot Muslim state, under
UN protection, could survive for years.

Could outside powers--the United Nations, NATO, the United States, a
consortium of major European powers--hasten the day when the Serbs and
their adversaries think it is time to settle? The minimum precondition
for Serbian willingness to compromise would be one or more serious Serbian
military setbacks. Why compromise when you are far ahead and face no credible
military challenges? Could--and should--outside powers issue such challenges?

For Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and even Albanians the dream solution is
for one or more major outside powers to give the Serbs a real thrashing.
Then they could move in for the kill. And kill it would be. Croats, Muslims,
and Albanians would do to Serbs as Serbs have done to them. Those whose
concerns are primarily humanitarian must be careful here, lest they tilt
the playing field too suddenly against the Serbs and turn today's victims
into tomorrow's avengers. The indiscriminate killing of Serbian civilians
is no moral improvement over the indiscriminate killing of Bosnian civilians.
Eventually, there may have to be a UN protection force to shield local
Serbs from vengeful Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians. Such a new
UNPROFOR could be announced in advance as part of a peace package.

The key question is whether major intervention by outside powers would
do more harm than good. Would it prevent the war from expanding or make
sure that it expanded? Would it mean an end to war against civilians or
worse civilian casualties? Would it push Russia into hostility with the
West and increase the chances of an extreme nationalist taking over in
Moscow?

Ring Around Serbia

Rather than a sudden reversal of fortune for the Serbs, peace would
best be served by a re-equilibration that makes it clear to an exhausted
Serbia that if it pushes the war any longer it could lose a great deal.
How does one communicate this to people currently steaming with nationalism
and in no mood to compromise? The answer may be simple but risky: outside
powers side with Serbia's historical enemies and make it clear they are
willing to support their territorial claims against Serbia. Then the best
course for Belgrade would be to agree to a compromise settlement soon that
retains some new territory plus rights and guarantees for Serbs outside
of Serbia.

Specifically, suppose a group of Western countries, certainly under
American leadership but perhaps under the cover of NATO or the Partnership
for Peace, moves credible forces and materiel into Hungary and Albania.
Politically, the Western group states that it "views with sympathy"
both host nations' territorial claims. The favorable scenario at this point
is that Serbia backs down from its maximalist position, relinquishes some
of its territorial conquests, and negotiates for the rights of Serbs outside
of Serbia in exchange for the rights of Hungarians in Vojvodina and Albanians
in Kosovo. (Unarmed Macedonia and historically friendly Romania have no
claims on Serbia.)

There is no guarantee this would work. A worst-case scenario at this
point would have the Serbs, now in a paranoid frenzy, attack all the new
threats. Therefore the outside powers would have to be perfectly willing
to capture Belgrade and destroy the current nationalist regime. The good
news here is that from the Hungarian border south to Belgrade, 100 miles,
the land is flat as a pancake, part of Hungary's great Pannonian Basin.
Indeed, it was part of Hungary until World War I. Serbs joke: "In
Vojvodina you can stand on a pumpkin and see Budapest." The only serious
obstacles would be some river crossings, including the Danube, which Belgrade
overlooks on high bluffs at the confluence of the Sava. For modern, mobile
warfare, the terrain is vastly better than the mountains of Bosnia.

The direct engagement of outside powers in Bosnia must be avoided, for
at least two reasons. First, the rugged terrain and frequent overcast in
Bosnia make the effective application of air power difficult; an attack
would have to be by ground forces, and this would mean considerable casualties.
Why fight the Serbs where they wish to be fought? (Or, as some American
soldiers wisecracked after the Gulf War: "We do deserts; we don't
do mountains.")

Second, direct engagement of outside forces in Bosnia ignores where
the orders, supplies, and key personnel come from: Belgrade. In Clausewitzian
terms, the center of gravity is not the mini-governments of the Serbian
Republics of Bosnia and Krajina but the real Serb government in Belgrade.
Change the mind of Belgrade's leaders and you change minds in Pale and
Knin, the respective capitals of the temporary Serbian ministates. Aim
for the head, not the tail.

An indirect approach has never been tried against Serbia, partly because
many "area experts" and journalists continue to look at the fighting
as local outbursts and refuse to see them as one war directed by Belgrade.
If successful, a "ring around Serbia" approach would force Serbia
to reconsider and negotiate. If unsuccessful, it would entail further bloodshed
and cost Serbia the northern Vojvodina (which Hungary seized in World War
II) and Kosovo (which Albania seized in World War II), a tragedy for Serbia
but a matter of supreme indifference to us.

The problems of such an indirect strategy are great. Balkan states have
a historical tendency to go it alone rather than form alliances. To participate
in a risky venture they would insist on elaborate guarantees and generous
gifts of money and weapons. All states in the region wish for free security
and think America should provide it. Greece likely would be furious and
drop out of NATO. We must ask ourselves how great a loss this would be.

What are the alternatives to a strategy of "ring around Serbia"?
One is to declare that we have no interests the region and distance ourselves
from it. Another is to declare that we have some interests in the region
but will pursue them only by peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and a long-term
economic embargo of Serbia.[17] This approximates the present approach,
if the Administration should ever get around to defining it. This too is
a dangerous strategy, for it could drag us into the conflict incrementally
and without clear goals or sufficient buildup of armed strength. Congress
has never voted on the question and would turn vengeful if the United States
should stumble into a war in the disadvantageous terrain of Bosnia.

If we are going to participate in the Third Balkan War, let us control
events rather than letting them control us. At the right time, immediately
after the Serbs are sobered by military reverses, a US-led "ring around
Serbia" policy might jolt them to the negotiating table. The time
to start building such a ring is now.

NOTES

1. For a brilliant explanation of the internal Serbian politics and
policies of this conservative coalition, see V. P. Gagnon, Jr., "Serbia's
Road to War," Journal of Democracy, 5 (April 1994), 117-31.

2. For this insight I am especially thankful to Dr. Anton Zabkar of
the Slovenian Defense Ministry, interviewed on 21 March 1994 in Ljubljana.
He was kind enough to give me a copy of his unpublished paper, "A
Third Yugoslavia: Reality or Utopia?" of July 1993.

3. Gagnon, p. 126.

4. From the author's discussions with Croatian officers at the Croatian
Defense College, Zagreb, 18 March 1994.

5. For a fuller discussion of this question, see Michael G. Roskin,
"The Bosnian-Serb Problem: What We Should and Should Not Do,"
Parameters, 22 (Winter 1992-93), 4, anthologized in Glenn Hastedt,
ed., American Foreign Policy 94/95 (Guilford, Conn.: Dushkin, 1994).

7. Quickly, outside support flowed into Bosnia via Croatia. The first
week of May 1994, for example, an Iranian air force transport landed with
60 tons of explosives at Zagreb. See John Pomfret, "Iran Ships Material
for Arms to Bosnians," The Washington Post, 13 May 1994, p.
A1.

8. According to Tirana, Arkan already put at least some of his forces
into Kosovo in early May 1994 and appeared there himself. Daily Report,
Foreign Broadcast Information Service--East Europe (hereafter FBIS), Annex,
3 May 1994, pp. 13-14.

9. See the remarks of a French officer on the scene in Roger Cohen,
"For the First Time, Bosnia Feels Time Is on Its Side," The
New York Times, 13 May 1994, p. A10.

10. One Western diplomat noted the renewed Croat-Bosnian cooperation
and said in late June 1994, "There are active preparations for a joint
attack in the fall." Roger Cohen, "New Strife in Bosnia?"
The New York Times, 28 June 1994, p. A9.

11. For the text, see FBIS, 31 March 1994, pp. 23-24. Original text
was from TANJUG, Belgrade, 30 March 1994.

12. Granic's remarks were carried by Zagreb radio and reported in FBIS,
1 April 1994, p. 39.

15. Within two months of the Croat-Bosnian agreement, military observers
detected a much-improved Bosnian military capability. See Cohen, The
New York Times, 13 May 1994.

16. Some observers think that by early 1994 the balance of forces in
Bosnia had already begun to shift in favor of the Muslims. See Patrick
Moore, "A New State in the Bosnian Conflict," RFE/RL Research
Report, 4 March 1994, pp. 33-36.

17. The latest war-without-gore approach argues for a Kennan-like long-term
economic embargo plus informational penetration of Serbia until it collapses
internally. This implies an indefinite continuation of the present lull,
which the Croats and Bosnian Muslims will likely soon end. The Third Balkan
War is not a replay of the Cold War; it is a hot one, and thus extremely
fluid and explosive. See David Gompert, "How to Defeat Serbia,"
Foreign Affairs, 73 (July-August, 1994), 4.

Dr. Michael G. Roskin is Professor of Political Science at Lycoming
College, Pa., and was Visiting Professor of US Foreign Policy at the US
Army War College from 1991 to 1994. During his time at the War College
he paid special attention to the Balkans and gained many insights from
visits to the region in 1993 and 1994.